BuzzShed tinkered with the model some, eliminating the rewards and going for more of a social networking angle, and that didn't prove profitable, either.

Two weeks ago, BuzzShed director Hayden Saunders sent out an email to members saying that they were looking for a buyer or else they were going to have to consider shutting down the site, and to please pass the word to any entrepreneur-types that might be interested. He said that new signups were strong, that they have a loyal core of active members, and that monetizing traffic through links, banners, and contextual ads had not been tried yet and might be a viable way of generating income.

I know I have some rewards program reps that visit CompareRewards pretty frequently. If you think there may be some synergies there between a video advertising platform and your rewards program, please contact hayden (at) buzzshed (dot) com.

Borders has changed its rewards program, adding a new paid membership level called Borders Rewards Plus. Here's a summary of the new Borders Rewards:

The free Borders Rewards program, as before, offers coupons for in-store and online savings and rewards members with $5 in Borders Bucks for $150 in "qualifying purchases." It's offering a 30% discount on in-store purchases of hardcover bestsellers. And while Borders lists "free shipping on $25+ online orders" as a perk of the new free Borders Rewards membership, that's something that's available to EVERYONE -- you don't have to be a member to get it.

The new Borders Rewards Plus program costs $20 a year, and it gives members free shipping on all Borders.com orders without having to hit the $25 minimum, 40% off vs. 30% on hardcover bestsellers in-store, 20% off selected hardcovers' list price in-store, 10% almost the regular or sale price of almost anything else in-store, and the same $5 in Borders Bucks for $150 in qualifying purchases.

The paid membership is worth it if you typically make several online orders a year of under $25, or if you spend over $200 a year in-store.

From today through September 6th, Borders rewards purchase amounts will be doubled in value toward the $150 requirement for $5 in Borders Bucks (spend $75, and you'll get $5 in Borders Bucks, in other words).

Read the press release from yesterday announcing the new Borders Rewards Plus program.

If you're a member of QuizPoints, I want to warn you before you spend too much time accumulating earnings with the program: the word is that payments are slow to non-existent and customer service inquiries are being ignored. The company that owns QuizPoints, Digital Branding, LLC, currently has an "F" rating with the Better Business Bureau. I'm editing my QuizPoints review to reflect this, pulling my referral link, and I suggest that you take your business elsewhere.

Some of my favorite sites that are like QuizPoints but have better reputations and BBB ratings include FusionCash (cash for offers), QuickRewards.net or CreationsRewards (cash or points for offers, surveys, and shopping), and MrRebates or Ebates (cashback for shopping). These are all my referral links, by the way, so your joining and participating will help support CompareRewards. (Thanks!)

FYI, Digital Branding also operates other websites including DollarSurveys.net, GoFreebies.com, and DailyRaffle.com.

Today, September 2nd, you'll earn a whopping 32% cashback versus the usual 16% at 123Inkjets! Ebates lists coupon codes for them, too, for additional savings!

Not a member of Ebates yet? Get a $5 bonus when you sign up and make your first purchase! -- Join Ebates today! (aff)

Today, September 2nd, you'll earn 4 points per dollar (worth around 3%) at PacSun!

If you're not a member of MyPoints.com and you'd like to sign up, earning points redeemable for gift cards for doing things like reading emails, answering surveys, completing polls, and shopping, please click here (aff) -- thanks!

It seems that "an intermittent technical error in late July" gave some MyPoints members 500 points for just clicking through a ShareBuilder offer, when they were supposed to open and fund a new ShareBuilder account in order to receive the points.

The error was caught and reversed earlier this week, with MyPoints sending out an explanation by email to members impacted by the mistake. This could have been a pretty costly error for MyPoints, depending on the number of "intermittent" erroneous 500 point credits that were awarded: 500 MyPoints = $3.73, give or take.

But the question I have is this: couldn't MyPoints have just honored their mistake? After all, if I go into a department store and an item is incorrectly marked, they honor their mistake. I can't tell you how many price mistake deals I've gotten online over the years, honored by the merchant nonetheless at their expense. You chalk it up to marketing expense, good will, write it off as a loss... certainly a company as large as MyPoints, which according to MyPointsCorp.com has over 7 million members in its database, can afford to honor their own $3.73 mistake... unless it was a very widespread error, affecting thousands and thousands of members, in which case I can see it not being financially feasible to honor the error, but that would indicate that it was more than just "intermittent."

Customer service is crucial to any business, and rewards programs aren't exempt from this principle. People make mistakes, and companies make mistakes, of course, but I think that MyPoints could have handled this better. Their email explanation was cold and impersonal, and though it offered an apology at the end, it didn't even seem that sincere. It read,

"Dear P-----,
We're writing you to explain the recent Sharebuilder activity in your MyPoints Account Statement. An intermittent technical error in late July caused a Point credit of 500 Points under the Description: 'ShareBuilder BonusMail Fund Account'. This offer was for opening and funding a ShareBuilder account. On 08-23-10 we reversed this erroneous Point award from your MyPoints account. Rest assured no rightfully earned Points have been deducted from your account. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and we appreciate your understanding.

Sincerely,The MyPoints Member Services Team"

People respond better to someone TAKING PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for a mistake. They also like to be offered some sort of consolation gift when they are the victim of a mistake. Had I been the one to craft this email, it would have gone something like this:

"Dear Becky,
I'm writing today to explain an account adjustment being made to your account. We goofed. About a month ago, we posted an offer that read, 'Get 500 points for opening and funding a new ShareBuilder account.' Thousands of MyPoints accounts were credited in error simply for clicking through the email. We weren't paid by the advertiser for the click-through, only for those members who completed the offer as stated. While we feel the right thing to do would be to allow all members to keep these points since it was our error, this would be too costly for our company particularly given this economic climate. MyPoints strives to provide our members with a seamless and error-free experience and in this instance we failed. Please accept my personal apology and a Good Will Credit in the amount of 50 points for the confusion and inconvenience that this may have caused you. We have learned from this unfortunate incident and will work hard to ensure that it doesn't happen again. Thank you for your continued membership, and please consider ShareBuilder for your online trading needs, where you'll receive 500 MyPoints for opening and funding a new account.

Humbly,
NAME OF SOMEBODY at MyPoints, and their title"

I think people would be more understanding of my version, don't you?

There are two versions of the card: a standard (physical) card and an electronic "card." Either can be used in-store. The only difference is that the physical card can be purchased and reloaded in-store or online... while the eCard can only be purchased and reloaded online.

The Sears Christmas Club website has a handy calculator for building a weekly savings plan: enter how much you'd like to save in total and when you want to begin, then it tells you how much to sock away every week to reach your goal.

The card has no expiration and no fees. It can't be used to buy third-party prepaid or debit cards, and no cash refunds are available for purchases made with the card. But all in all, if you were planning to shop at Sears or Kmart anyway, this is a free 3% store credit (up to $100) just for buying a card by 10/31 and getting it preloaded by November 15th.

Curious and more than a little irritated, I poked around on the site some and realized the problems:

1. Clearance purchases don't count. I knew this at some point but forgot about it.
2. My debit card number changed when I was issued a new card, and I hadn't updated it on the site.
3. One of my credit cards had expired, and I hadn't been prompted to update the expiration date by two years. (The card number didn't change, mind you.)

Further, if you don't remember to log in and print the reward...you lose it. Since joining the program in fall of '08, they issued me five $10 rewards...and I only used one.

Plus, I would have earned probably enough points to get the $10 reward every month since March had I been vigilant enough to check in and see that my credit card expired and my debit card number was outdated.

I'm not faulting JCPenney, mind you -- their rules are pretty clear. But I wanted to offer this up as a reminder to those of you who may have signed up for JCPrewards and like me, haven't been attentive to your account history: it's your responsibility to keep your info updated and to stay on top of your account to be sure that points are credited when you shop, and rewards are printed and used before they expire. Don't miss out on your rewards like I did! Log in now at JCPrewards.com and make sure your information is up to date!

A few examples of the cashback rate boosts include Barnes and Noble (up from 4 to 6% -- get your textbooks here), Buy.com from 1% to 4% (great for picking up a new laptop or graphing calculator), Shoebuy from 12% to 15% (shoes and backpacks, and all orders ship free), and Old Navy from 3% to 10% (stylish clothes for all ages).

MrRebates provides coupon codes for all of their merchants, where available. So their cashback rates are ON TOP OF the great coupon codes provided for these stores.

If you're not a member of MrRebates already (gee whiz, where have you been?!) -- CompareRewards visitors have been given a special $7.50 signup bonus (vs. the usual $5)... all you have to do is join MrRebates here! (aff)

All appears to be fixed now (no thanks to TuCows or iPowerWeb), and finally I'm back in business.

Thanks for checking back in with me, and I hope that you'll continue to visit frequently for the latest news, reviews, and tips on rewards programs, survey sites, and other cool ways to save and earn online!

Through September 3rd, you'll earn 7% (vs. the usual 5%) at Avon!

Upromise has great ways to earn for college or cashback for yourself both online and off. Be sure to check out their dining program and their eCoupons! Not a member yet? Join UPromise.com here! (aff)

In doing some digging, I found this press release from November stating that Aperture Health, the owners of Wellness360, had signed a contract with Neudesic Media Group to provide advertising for the site. Neudesic represents an impressive stable of tech websites, but Wellness360 would be their first foray into the "health and fitness vertical."

Maybe the site's been down for them to do some tweaking of the program as a result of this partnership with Neudesic Media. I haven't been able to find any new information since that announcement (which pre-dated the site closure by almost two months). The company is still a "pink" stock, traded OTC but without any requirements to disclose financials. They were losing money as of the last time they did file publicly, for the third quarter of 2008.

If you were owed money from Wellness360, I'm still very skeptical that you're going to get it. The homepage still promises the sharing of advertising revenues with members, but with a new company in charge of handling the advertising, who knows how that's going to play out.

I just hope, for poor John Schneider's sake, that they remove his pic/video from their homepage. I can't imagine that he'd want to shill for these guys.

Some of the more vocal outbursts about the end of Bing Cashback can be found on this post on SlickDeals.net, this one on FatWallet, this one on TechCrunch, here on CNet News, and on the comments to the official announcement on Bing's blog here.

Commenters felt that the program suffered from poor marketing, bad PR for canceling cashback when members used a coupon code, confusion about cashback amounts being given in a range (e.g., 2-8% cashback), not enough merchants participating in the product price comparison feature, presumably high administrative costs (versus its pre-MS days as Jellyfish.com, with just 26 employees), the limiting of participation to US-only, etc. Many responders said that cashback was the only reason they used Bing at all, and that they would be changing their default search engine back to Google.

The BCB competitors I spoke with felt that Bing's foray into the cashback shopping biz didn't impact their business, but rather increased consumer awareness (for example by the Bing Cashback television ads) and made the pie a little bigger for everyone to take a slice, so to speak.

Jeff Nobbs of Extrabux (aff): "Microsoft has done a great job of using its resources to spread the word about cash back to millions of consumers. For that, I'm sure all cashback programs are very grateful. Whatever Microsoft was hoping to get from its cashback program, whether it was market share from Google or huge amounts of consumer purchase data, I hope they achieved their goals. Their departure will leave many consumers looking for another solution, and I hope Extrabux can fill that void as the only comparison shopping engine to integrate cash back."

Craig Cassata of MrRebates (aff): "Both Mr. Rebates and competitors that I've talked with have seen no decline in business since Bing has introduced cash-back. In fact, most have seen good growth so it's certainly possible that Bing actually did all loyalty sites a 'service' by really spreading the word about how cashback works and its benefits." Cassata went on to encourage Bing Cashback orphans to consider making the switch to MrRebates: "If someone is looking for competitive cash-back rates, Mr. Rebates certainly won't disappoint!"

Kevin Johnson of Ebates (aff): "Ebates.com is sorry to learn that Bing is planning to end its cash back shopping program. We believe Bing's program was actually good for Ebates' business in that it introduced consumers to the concept of cash back while creating the opportunity for more comprehensive and service oriented offerings like ours to address their broader shopping needs."

While I respect these guys' opinions, of course, my theory is that Bing Cashback was way too complicated for the average cashback shopping newcomer to grasp, and that the one rewards program hurt most by Bing was probably FatWallet Cashback. FatWallet allowed discussion of Bing Cashback deals on their own, very popular deal forums, frequented by some of the most deal-savvy shoppers on the 'net (which I thought was very progressive and open-minded of them). I think that many Bing Cashback members will simply revert back to the familiar, and FatWallet will see a return in droves of former members. I haven't received a response to my request for a comment from FatWallet as of this posting.

In an interesting twist, there is a rumor floating around that Amazon wants to take over Bing Shopping. Jay Yarow of BusinessInsider.com posted on Wednesday that an industry source with high-level contacts at both Amazon and Bing is saying that talks are ongoing for Bing to "outsource" the shopping search results to Amazon. Neither company would comment on record to BusinessInsider, and as of this writing, no further information is available.

It would make no sense for Bing to ONLY provide search results for items being sold through Amazon. Sure, Amazon would make it worth Bing's while financially, but with Bing's push to be THE decision engine, only providing shopping results from one vendor would be bizarre. My feeling is that Amazon has something much grander in mind:

- Bing already has the platform developed for providing product-level pricing...and so does Amazon.
- Amazon has a method in place for processing payments (Amazon Payments, which was a cashout option on Bing Cashback).
- Amazon has an affiliate program themselves (although it won't allow cashback sites to pass a share of it back to their members).
- Amazon has a rewards program themselves, mTurk. While it's not a cashback shopping program, at least they have some experience in managing a large membership base, fighting fraud, etc.
- Wouldn't it make more sense for Amazon to just take ownership of Bing Cashback's platform, incorporating Amazon's products in addition to those from the thousands of other merchants currently participating in BCB? They could offer cashback ONLY in the form of Amazon credit, which would increase business at Amazon.com... or they could continue to offer cashback in the form of direct deposits but make some sort of incentive (e.g., a 5% bonus) for requesting Amazon credit.

We'll have to wait and see what a Bing/Amazon shopping partnership might have in store for us. In the meantime, Bing Cashback users have until July 30th to earn cashback before the program officially ends.

See my Alternatives to Bing Cashback chart for a detailed comparison of some of the best alternatives to Bing Cashback.

All of these programs have been around for longer than Bing Cashback, and I've used them myself and can recommend them as being reliable and having good customer service. The links provided to each program are my refer-a-friend or affiliate links where available.

Yesterday, the site was again updated to provide a link to a blog entry by the owner...now promising a return sometime after July 4th. The new site will reward honest existing members with some sort of unspecified "advantage," while weeding out scammers and others who were less than honest in some way. It will also introduce some new features that would have been difficult to roll out while the site was live.

I was impressed with how forthright the owner was with information about the challenges the program's been facing. I think most people are willing to be patient and understanding if they are just kept in the loop. Nice move by SuperPoints, and I hope they're able to make the improvements necessary to sustain them, and keep their honest members happy, for the long-term.